The Racial Justice Alliance is pissed. The legal weed industry is too damn white, they say. Not enough people of color. And they say it was built to be that way, and they demand that Vermont change theirs.
Related: Legal Weed in California Leads to More Marijuana Enforcement (not less).
Affirmative action for legal(ized) weed?
It occurs to me that in a free and open market, anyone looking to leap ahead will seek out and hire gifted growers or people who understand the product, regardless of race. That folks with the skills will find people who need them and vice-versa.
That’s the beauty of open markets and capitalism, but Vermont has been on a long slow ride away from anything that looks like that, so what if the Axe grinders have a point?
Maybe mostly white Vermont is a seething pit of systemic racism like the Racial Justice Alliance says. It is owned and operated by the Democrat party with a token Republican governor to the left of JFK.
“We’re here trying to dismantle systemic racism, which, at the core, is economics. All this [law] does is pile on to that.”
There’s a bit of back and forth on that point between The Racial Justice Alliance and Democrats who wrote and pushed through the legislation. The latter claim no systemic racism; the former disagree. But I’d like to point out something more important.
Systemic Racism, much like BLM, has nothing to do with opportunities for people of color. It is not about the rights of minorities. It’s a buzz word to silence objections to more government control of the economy.
Systemic racism is a smokescreen. It silences objection leaving the debate floor open to radical left-wing ideas. Economic systems that disadvantage people of color more than free markets.
When the government removes risk by force and takes control, the only people advantaged are those in power. Opportunity is bought with devotion to the state and those that run it.
If history is any guide, even in predominantly black or Latino nations, the people (of color) are poorer and more badly treated than in Western Democracies or the American Republic.
A misery whose only “cure” is often drug use, alcoholism, and addiction.
In other words, Vermont is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while refugees flee to New Hampshire, where they set us on the same damn path that promoted them to leave Vermont.
The problem isn’t the weed or its legalized status. It’s the government, which has always been my primary objection to most of the discussions about legalization.
The state’s role is to decriminalize, step back, to whatever degree the electorate will tolerate it. At that point, existing laws about opportunity, employment, and discrimination weigh in like any other business or opportunity.
We’re not talking about advancing socializing it (more government, not less) at that point. We are looking at whether there are genuine barriers to entry or if someone is grinding an ax to create a problem that doesn’t exist – to get the government more involved, which I suspect is the problem in Vermont.